Next Storm A Likely Miss For Vermont; Still Going To Snow

Though not as widespread as earlier in the week, winter storm
warnings and advisories still cover huge areas of the South

 We've been eagerly - or not so eagerly - awaiting Storm #2 in this very active and wintry pattern here in Vermont. 

It is starting to look like for a good part of the state anyway Storm #2 will be largely a miss, but it's still going to snow. 

This second storm this morning was causing additional misery for the winter weather disaster zone known as Texas and much of the rest of the South.  Winter storm warnings remained in effect for much of Texas on up to Virginia. 

Once again, ice storms are ruling the roost, with damaging freezing rain accumulations expected today in eastern Texas and parts of Louisiana and Mississippi.

The freezing rain will also eventually focus on parts of North Carolina and much of Virginia, where more than six inches of snow and up to a half inch of freezing rain is expected through Friday. This will cause additional tree and power line damage in the same areas hit by ice last weekend. 

Along a stripe from northern Texas all the way to southern New England, heavy snow is falling or will fall  between now and Friday. 

However, except for maybe southern Vermont, the Green Mountain State is beginning to look like we're too far north to get smacked by the heavy snow. This storm is now aiming for an eventual path pretty well south and east of Cape Cod.

This storm's upper level support will be largely west of the storm, and for a time west of Vermont.  This will add lift to the atmosphere over us. Which means we have a long time from Thursday night through Saturday in which we'll get occasional light snow. 

It'll never snow hard, but the National Weather Service in South Burlington is thinking the long duration of the snow still means we'll get three to five inches of snow over a couple of days through midday Saturday. At least that's the initial guesstimate. More refinements to the forecast are inevitable. 

It's another case of Vermont being flurried to death. Very common for our neck of the woods. 

If you've been reading this here blog thingy, this storm was originally expected to go by to our west, at least as of the beginning of the week.  The forecasts have kept shifting the storm further and further east, so it's remarkable that a storm that last weekend was predicted to go over New York State will now go well east of New England.

Of course, there's still time for forecasts to change, so it's always possible this trend of pushing the storm further and further east could continue. Or, it could also start bending westward toward us again. 

We have reached the stage in the forecasting game, though, that the scenario I outlined above is pretty likely.